Buying a new laptop for my dtr to start college. I seen something I have no idea what it is. One I looked at states 4gb ram+16gb optane ram. What is this exactly and would this be as good as having 8gb ram?

Optane RAM is, essentially, a portion of the solid state hard drive that stores your most commonly used programs like RAM does so that it can launch it faster when you need it. I haven't used it personally, but I really don't see much of a need for something like this unless the computer is a couple of years old. Even then, a solid state drive and a bit of extra RAM will improve performance drastically.

Personal opinion, no. Optane wouldn't be worth the extra money (if it's extra). Go for the 8GB of RAM instead. More RAM will increase the longevity of your machine. If there's no price difference and it already has Optane with it (but still the amount of RAM you want), then sure. Go for it.